Measure of a Life
by vega rin
Summary: Takes place before and after T3. How does one measure the worth of a life? John Connor and Kate Brewster come to find out. [A new part, Part 6, is, believe or not, up]
1. Part 1

Measure of a Life  
by vega  
  
Spoiler: All three movies. Takes place before and after T3.  
  
Summary: How does one measure the worth of a life? John Connor and Kate Brewster come to find out.  
  
Disclaimer: Not mine.   
  
_For I have known them all already, known them all:  
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,  
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;  
I know the voices dying with a dying fall  
Beneath the music from a farther room.  
So how should I presume?  
_  
-T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

* * *

He draws the line right here, where he will disappear. Where he has to disappear.  
  
He sees his mother one last time, taking her hand that still feels warm. This isn't her anymore, only a shell left of Sarah Connor, the legend-to-be, yet it is difficult to believe that she is no longer here with him. He kisses her forehead for the last time, refuses to shed any tears. She wouldn't want his tears. In fact, she would want him to go on and live. Except, he no longer knows what living is. What it is supposed to mean.  
  
But he will not stop. There is no home to return to, no place for him to go. With his mother gone, there's nothing to lose, no vows to keep.   
  
That night, he rides on.

* * *

The world died above them.  
  
What was she supposed to do?  
  
Seconds and minutes and hours. In silence, they listened. To the catatonic booms from the outside world that shook the shelter, to the radio that had once fervently asked for the man in charge and now only spat out low static with no evidence of human voice. Only two of them were safe here from the nuclear attacks, while the world inexplicably died above them. If there was God, she would like to protest the unfairness of it all, sobbing and screaming, but she didn't dare. At this moment, no one was listening.   
  
She watched the profile of the man beside her, how the echoes of confusion, loss, determination, and anger wrapped him, suffocating him. She stared at their hands that were clasped together. The frightening numbness she felt eventually dissipated into oblivion, and it became clear what she was supposed to do.  
  
"Let me take a look," she offered, wiping off the trace of tears from her face.  
  
It was the first thing Kate could say since the end of the world had begun, the first few words she was able to utter since the only world that she knew died above them. Simplicity in her request obviously took John off guard. He blinked, his hand still entwined with hers. "What?"   
  
"Your ankle."  
  
John looked down at his torn and bloody foot with a frown. The pain T-X had inflicted upon him for the last time had to be excruciating, but he seemed to have forgotten it.  
  
"And leg," she added, remembering him limp from the very first moment she'd met him. Correction, the very first moment she'd reacquainted him. That fateful night, less than a day ago. His reappearance in her life had, literally, changed everything.   
  
She couldn't dwell on the impossibility of all this. Not right now.   
  
For a second, he seemed ready to decline her offer, but at her stern look, he closed his mouth obediently.   
  
"Sit," she ordered, leading him into the impersonal and cold hallway outside the control room to a thirty-year-old sofa nearby. He complied, almost in a daze. "I'll go find a First Aid kit."  
  
And she did find one inside a cabinet of the control room. There had be other medical equipment here somewhere, but she thought this had to do, for now. They'd have time to look into the stock later. Plenty of time.  
  
When she came back to him in hurried steps, he was leaning against the sofa, his eyes heavy with strain and ache. But he smiled faintly at her when he saw her. "You're a vet," he stated in a half-question, as if the irony of it had just occurred to him. "It suits you, somehow."  
  
The automatic reply she'd given whenever her occupation was a topic of discussion came out from her lips, "Animals are much easier to deal with than people. They're much less pesky, for one thing." In the back of her mind, she understood that she'd never be able to return to that life again. In the back of her mind, she understood this whole thing was just... absurd. But in reality, she wasn't sure just how much she understood. It was just instinct, telling her to do the first things first.  
  
She kneeled beside him and checked his wounds. The ankle needed a splint. The leg injury was infected and swollen. She hoped like hell that the thirty-year-old medical reserve would have some good antibiotics. "You were already hurt when you broke into my hospital," she said, trying to distract him from the pain as she gently strapped his ankle. "What happened?" she asked, looking up for a moment.  
  
He hissed slightly at her touch, but he clenched his jaw and bore it, like he was used to pain. "A deer happened," he answered neutrally.  
  
The unexpected answer and the absurdity of all caused her to break into sudden laughter. She stopped a second later, horrified.   
  
"It's not wrong to laugh," John said quietly, watching her. Understanding.  
  
So it wasn't, but what was one supposed to do with the knowledge that billions of people were dying at that very moment and there was nothing they could do? She was letting it go, she really was, yet the grief, like a dull knife, raked and twisted in her chest, unearthing and making it raw. So raw. "And it's not wrong to be glad," she said. "To be alive."  
  
"And it's not wrong to cry over them," he said, his fingers brushing against her cheek, on the dried trails of tears.  
  
His simple gesture almost left her without breath. Slowly she tore off her eyes from him. She couldn't cry any more over her father and Scott. "I'm just one of the millions who lost their father and fianc? today."   
  
His eyes held too much painful understanding. "What difference does that make in how you feel?"  
  
Nothing. Nothing at all.   
  
She didn't answer.  
  
"Kate," he began softly.  
  
"We'll talk later. But not now, John. Not now."  
  
He nodded slowly, respecting her wish.  
  
She finished bandaging and found a pill for him to take. When she was satisfied enough and made sure he hadn't sustained any other injury, she asked simply, "What do we do?"   
  
And he understood. "We wait for the radiation to cool off. Locate the survivors. Get ready to fight."   
  
There it was again, John as the future leader that would save the world. Determination and burden were all he was made of, all that he felt. She stopped him from trying to get up. "For now, you need to rest."  
  
He shook his head. "I need to prepare. I need to check the inventories, the weapons--"  
  
"No, you don't," she cut him off sharply. "You're barely standing now as it is. There isn't anything we can do for a while, and you need to get some sleep before you dead faint on your feet."   
  
"I think I'd know when I need to rest and when I can still stand."  
  
The stubborn streak in him was more than evident, but did he really think that would work on her? She crossed her arms, her chin up. "Look, Mr. savior-of-the-world, you don't get to boss me around, not when you're sick like a puppy and in no condition to do so. You're no good to the mankind like this. I can knock you out just to get you to rest, but it won't be pleasant, so let's not. Lie down."  
  
He watched her, the same dumbstruck look he'd had when she'd pushed him into a cage back in the hospital on his face again. Suddenly, there was a faint smile tugging at his lips. "You really do remind me of my mother."  
  
This seemed to be the best compliment he could bestow upon any woman. "I would love to have met her," Kate said, meaning it.  
  
And he appreciated it. "Okay, I give," he said finally, sinking deeper into the sofa. His tense body seemed to relax gradually as the pill finally kicked in. "You should rest, too," he murmured, his eyelids slowly closing.   
  
"I will," she promised, at the same time thinking: _less than a day and I'm already acting like his wife.  
_  
The problem was, she was supposed to be his wife, at some time in the future. The idea might have been registered and even accepted, but it didn't mean she had digested in and understood fully just what had happened. And would happen.  
  
For a long moment, she watched him sleep uneasily on the sofa. She tucked him under a blanket she found and tested his feverish forehead. It wouldn't make sense for the great John Connor to die of infection and fever. It wouldn't. And it was, ridiculously enough, up to her to take care of him.  
  
The task seemed overwhelmingly impossible. She, a pet doctor, the second in command of the last hope for the mankind?   
  
She watched John again. He looked so young, a hint of the mischief he had as a juvenile delinquent still there. Barely, but still there. She still remembered her first kiss, remembered the empty spot that hadn't been occupied for a long time since his disappearance. She wondered if she'd grow to love him, if that was the destiny. She wondered if she already did.  
  
The booming had stopped. The world was silent. Dead. If she strained hard enough, she could almost hear the screams and the pains of the dying people above. But, nothing. She could hear nothing.  
  
She was certain that she would, though. Soon.  
  
For a long moment, all she heard was the sound of her own tears falling.


	2. Part 2

2.

She has a computer class with him. She flips her hair once and turns around slightly to glimpse the boy she kissed the day before. His usual seat is empty. For the whole class, she feels its void pulling her in, drawing her in like a small center of gravity. She actively participates in not listening, and her thoughts are inevitably on him. With him. For no reason. She guesses this is what a crush must feel like. Her first crush. Here we go, she thinks.   
  
He doesn't show up for the whole day, which is not entirely unusual for John Connor, the resident bad boy. But it becomes extremely unusual when she returns to her empty house, when she pours a glass of orange juice for herself and turns on the TV.  
  
_Death, death, death, missing, death._  
  
Remarkably, she doesn't drop her glass. She calmly takes in the news and stares at the face on the screen she has been thinking about the whole day. She thinks about the grave she visits with her father, the busy military man who is never here, on every Sunday. She wonders what death is supposed to be like. If it could be colder than the air of her own home.  
  
A month later, when the name John Connor is forgotten from everyone's mind, Kate still remembers his face, the trail of deaths he has left, and a single glistening moment in the basement.

* * *

He woke up from a hazy dream into a hazier reality, convinced everything had been a nightmare. That this reality was only a different version of the same dream that had haunted his entire life.  
  
His eyes fluttered open, and the white florescence light almost blinded him as he breathed in cool, sterile air. For a second, he didn't know where he was. This was different, not one of the construction sites he'd slipped in some nights to sleep, not another underground homeless hideouts. This was--  
  
Crystal Peak.  
  
He sat up, a jolt of reality shattering through his entire body.  
  
It wasn't a nightmare. What he had seen, what he had felt, Judgment Day -- they were not his nightmare. He shut his eyes again, burying his face into his palms. His hands were moving, so he guessed he was alive. He knew he was alive because the horror of everything flooded back into his memory, burning into his every bone.   
  
Judgment Day.  
  
So it had come to this.   
  
The shock of it all had faded with the night's sleep, and only bitterness had survived. Round, round, round like a carousel whirling in its place, the future was spinning and spinning and never letting him go from its endless circle.  
  
In silence, the question circled back and forth. Why? Why?  
  
To live.  
  
To live, Kate had answered him the night before.  
  
_Kate.  
_  
For a second, panic skipped a beat of his heart. When he found her sleeping on the sofa next to his, he began to breathe again.  
  
Under the white, fluorescence light, her auburn hair quietly glittered.   
  
He watched as peaceful serenity fleeted across her sleeping face. He picked up the thin grass-green blanket that had slipped onto the floor and fingered its texture. She'd tucked him under it overnight. He covered her with the blanket and wished her a pleasant dream.   
  
To live.  
  
He hoped that was a good enough answer.  
  
And it was time to work.  
  
He limped across the hall to the barracks farther into the compound. He slowly inspected every section, occasionally picking out a few items here and there that they needed immediately. He spent a little more time on the weapons barracks, checking over the explosives and the various assortments of war gadgets. This wouldn't be enough, he knew. There were all kinds of weapons that had been known thirty years ago displayed and stocked here, yet, against Skynet and its machines, they weren't enough. They were never enough.   
  
He had things to do.  
  
He returned and found her still on the sofa. He watched her again for a moment, then moved into the control room. He needed to check the security system of this compound and acertain how long this would last, if it could, against the future war.  
  
The computers came alive with a whoosh, and one by one the monitors fizzed from the black abyss. For a sickening second, he wondered if this shelter's security system was in any way uplinked to the 'net, and ultimately, to Skynet. But it wasn't. It was an independent system, with separate control structures underneath. It was old, all right, but definitely effective, and probably the only computer system they had now which they could use without worrying about Skynet's intrusion.   
  
Except for the weapons in the barracks, there was not much for the self-defense within and outside the perimeter of the shelter. Alarms upon unauthorized intrusions were pretty much it. He made a mental list of things to do and included fortifying the compound. There were only two entrances to this shelter from outside, and surveillance cameras were installed at every passage. One entrance had already been blocked with the explosion caused by... T-850. Uncle Bob. The unlikely father figure who had saved his life time and again. The machine that could end up killing him someday. Oh, the irony.  
  
The other entrance was still operating, but not accessible from outside unless anyone trying to enter had the code. He flicked on the camera that was supposed to show the view of the complex from outside, wondering just exactly what he was expecting to see.  
  
And there was nothing on the screen. Nothing at all except the snowcrash.  
  
Of course.  
  
The above world was dead.  
  
He clenched his hand into a fist and unclenched it, testing against the paralyzing numbness. He was alive, only to be weighed down by the death.  
  
To live.  
  
To live?  
  
If fate was going to saddle him with this 'savior of the mankind' crap, it could've at least made him unfeeling, not to hear every scream that he could've prevented. He had been trapped between choices that he couldn't change, struggled and struggled to get out of the game. Now, even the mere disguises of a choice had been taken away. Only the fleeting images and broken whispers of the people he couldn't save echoed through the empty walls.   
  
_Feeling sorry for yourself?_  
  
His mother's voice, as always, took an opportune moment to speak out. He imagined her face that had been rarely graced with a smile accompanying the question, admonishing him, teasing him, encouraging him, pushing him.   
  
But his mother wasn't here. The Day had come, and she wasn't here. And the weight of the destined future smothered him, him alone.   
  
_The future is not set, you know that._  
  
But it had been set all along. Judgment Day had been inevitable. He and his mother had stopped nothing. Then why do anything? If everything was set in stone, why do anything? He'd sit tight and still become the great military dickhead. He already knew what he'd become, what he'd do, who he'd meet, how he'd send his father to the known death. Now, in the courtesy of Uncle Bob the T-850, he knew when and how he was going to die. Destiny. Fate. If such things existed, why grieve?   
  
_That is enough whining. Get on your feet, solider!_  
  
_But Mom, haven't I earned this moment, at least this? I'd lived without you, with nothing, and for this moment, I'd like to be weak. Let me be weak. Please. Just for a moment.  
_  
There was only silence.  
  
He had been staring into the white and black dots dancing across the feeds from the surveillance cameras for about eternity when soft footsteps broke his reverie.  
  
He turned around and met Kate's blue eyes staring into his across the control room. She was leaning against the doorframe, her arms wrapping around her body, quietly observing him.  
  
He gathered himself, shaking off his dark thoughts and trying to think of something, anything, to say. He almost said 'Good morning', but stopped when he realized the statement was false in every way. It wasn't a morning, and by several definitions, there was supposed to be nothing good that could be found in their situation. "Hi," he tentatively offered instead, leaning back against the chair.   
  
"Hi." Her soft voice echoed in the spacious hall.  
  
There was a long silence as they tried to find words, to articulate.   
  
A second later, he was smiling. She, too, broke into a small smile, and with it, the odd yet understandable awkwardness melted into the thin air.   
  
"That's better," he said, and her smile spread little more broadly. Absently, he wished she'd smile more often.  
  
She stepped into the room, going over to the side table where he'd put down the things he'd picked up from the stock barracks. Some clothes, food, towels and soaps. Little, important things. She picked up a set of clothes and came back moments later in an oversized T-shirt and sweat pants, looking slightly more alive, cleaner.  
  
With a curious look, she inspected other items on the table, stopping when she saw two mugs he'd prepared while she was changing.  
  
"It's coffee," he explained. "Hard to believe, isn't it? Actual food."  
  
"Thank God," she murmured as she cupped one mug with her two hands. "I wouldn't last long without coffee."   
  
Then it was a good thing they had plenty of it, he thought as he watched her going over to the next item on the table. She fingered its black metal surface, her expression suddenly shadowed.  
  
He didn't want to do this yet, but there was no choice. "You know how to use it," he said questioningly, but he already knew the answer. He'd seen her using it, almost as comfortably as he did.  
  
But this was different from the day before, when she'd used guns with a second's notice. That had been instinctive, reflective reactions for survival. This was premeditation, and with it came the reality check. This was really happening. From this day forth, there would never be a single day when they would be without a gun at their side, ready to use.  
  
If the thought scared him, the one who'd been prepared for this every moment of his life, he couldn't begin to wonder how it would affect her.  
  
"Kate," he said gently, a question unspoken.  
  
She didn't answer right away. She took the handgun into her palm, weighing it, contemplating its trigger. Then with one defiant move, she took it in. "I'm afraid," she said finally. She slowly turned to him and looked him directly into his eyes. "Are you disappointed?"  
  
In her? The question itself was unthinkable. "No," he said.  
  
She met his eyes, searching for something, anything. She nodded, and he heard her silent thank-you.  
  
"What are you working on?" she asked a moment later, looking over his shoulder into the computer screen and nursing the cup of coffee.  
  
"The systems check. The security system has radiation detectors, and it seems like we're right in the middle of the blast radius. We need to make sure that the radiation isn't still in the atmosphere before we make any attempts of returning to the surface. It'd be a while before we can contact any survivors, but I figured we need to be prepared as early as possible."  
  
She sat on the chair beside his, her expression somber. "What's going to happen?"  
  
He had thought about this perhaps over a thousand times, drew hundreds of scenarios of what to do when it'd come to this day. Somehow, he still couldn't believe it had come to this point and this day, when he would have to actually plan the war against the machines.   
  
"People don't know what was behind the attack yet. For a while, they'd believe it was Russians. The first thing is letting people know that it was Skynet, the machines, not another country that attacked us," the words were streaming out with every authority, with not an ounce of emotion, and he didn't recognize his own voice. "We need to create a new long-range communication that's not affected by Skynet. There're no central authorities of any kind left standing, and every news network available would be controlled by Skynet. Anyone trying to follow directions from the existing communication system would be following Skynet's orders, maybe even be put into camps to serve the machines and terminated. They would follow the orders, thinking it's the government's way of taking care of people in the nuclear aftermath, and we have to stop that from happening. And, Crystal Peak can't be our permanent base. This place is on the record, and Skynet is bound to hit the known shelters first once it begins to mobilize enough HKs."  
  
Kate, who had been quietly listening, asked this time, "HKs?"   
  
"HKs. Hunter-Killers. They would be skeleton versions of the T-850 you saw. Of course, it would take some time for Skynet to be able to manufacture them on a massive scale. But we need to set up a national grid, camps for people to hide before they're discovered by HKs ASAP. And we need to manufacture our own weapons against them. What we have here of course are not enough, and--"  
  
Suddenly, her hand was on his arm. "It wasn't your fault."  
  
He stopped, his streaming words suddenly muted.  
  
"It wasn't your fault," Kate repeated. "I was there, I know you did everything you possibly could. Don't blame yourself for this."  
  
There was too much understanding in her eyes. Since his mother, he'd had no one who could get him, and suddenly, now, within the claustrophobic bind of fate, Kate Brewster was offering him her understanding. This thing, being understood, was new to him, and he didn't know quite how to deal with it. "It wasn't?" he said, bitterness sipping out despite himself.   
  
"You didn't make those bombs. All those things you didn't have a hand in have happened, and you can't be responsible for everyone's life. It is up to each of them, to each of us who led this to happen," her voice was soft yet stern, not allowing any objections. "It's not up to you to save everyone."  
  
Oh, but it was. Suddenly he wanted to ask her where she'd been in the last forty-eight hours. It was up to him to save everyone. Because he was John Connor.  
  
All because he was John Connor.  
  
What was he? What was he, really? How did one measure his life up against so many lives, against the world? What would he be possibly worth all this? What was he?  
  
He was John Connor, as T-850 had told him.  
  
It was a joke. There was no way fighting this circular logic of the time paradox.  
  
And as if she read his thoughts, she leaned closer to him, her hand gently covering his. "Don't try to live for us, for the people. You just need to be you. I think, in the end, that would be enough."  
  
He stared at her hand, and at his. He wanted to believe it so much that it ached. "You don't know everything yet."  
  
"Then I guess you need to tell me everything," she said.  
  
He watched this woman, who reminded him so much of his mother, who had all the rights to break down at this moment yet didn't, who held her unwavering gaze on him. And he didn't know what to do. From the years of isolation, he no longer knew how to trust, how to open up.   
  
What was he to her, anyway? What was she to him?  
  
She wasn't supposed to be here. He had seen this day every moment of his life. Since he was 13, this was all that he'd seen. And she was the only thing he'd never seen coming.  
  
But if things were really inevitable, the destiny already set in stone, in this predictable future, she was the only unpredictability he could look forward to. Maybe, maybe.  
  
Something burned behind his eyes and his chest, telling him that he was alive. Living. Breathing. Feeling.   
  
All this, to live the future.  
  
It just might mean everything.


	3. Part 3

3.  
  
A year after his mother's death. Another town. Another nightmare. Another midnight run.   
  
Is this life?  
  
This has to be, because he cannot have anything else.  
  
He, like a bad version of Prometheus, has seen into the future, of its catastrophe that leads to his supposed destiny. No Great John Connor, and no Judgment Day. It's more than a fair trade-off, and that's enough.   
  
Isn't it?  
  
He fears life, a collection of fleeting images and broken whispers of the living, breathing people who could be as good as dead if he were to find his destiny. He's plagued by the unending history, every waking moment a nightmare of isolation and every sleeping moment a literal nightmare. There once has been a reason for this, this desolation of life, and he can't remember now. Every day on this earth is supposed to be a gift. A gift that he can no longer appreciate. He can't remember if this is fighting to live or to die.  
  
But he still runs, because he cannot stop. He will not stop.   
  
He fears the consequence of life.

* * *

"Save the world at thirteen, everything else has to go downhill."  
  
His eyes held a faraway reminiscence. His hands concealed slight trembles as he brushed away a lock of his hair. His voice, chipped with a lighter tone, hid layers of emotions.   
  
She watched him as he told her bits and pieces of his story, heard the sound of his loneliness echo in her own heart. His mother. The mythical Sarah Connor. Teaching her son to fight, to lead, to win. The terminators. His father. His lonely existence.  
  
All those years, alone.  
  
His loneliness was infectious.   
  
"It must've been difficult," she said quietly, wondering if she had any right at all to make such an understatement. "Living off the grid. I'm surprised no one asked you any questions."   
  
"I looked like another junkie, another homeless. Nobody cared," he said with not nearly enough bitterness the statement warranted.   
  
It was merely a few days after their meeting, yet she was now unable to imagine the world without John Connor. But before, before all this, she wouldn't have thought twice about this man, who, with the exception of the intelligent blue eyes, had looked exactly like countless other junkies haunting downtown, while she would go on living her picture-perfect life with Scott. What was she then? What was the humanity? She didn't want to think that Skynet had the right idea after all.  
  
"I'm not blaming anyone for the condition that some of people had to live with," he said, reading her mind. Again. "You had your life, everyone has their own life, and some people are just forgotten. It's no one's fault."  
  
Then whose fault was it? John would go back to that mere shell of a life as nobody if that could undo Judgment Day. And she... she wasn't sure if she deserved this chance, this supposed place of hers in the future. In his future. Believing him and his story wasn't the hard part. She would take one look at John and all the doubts would disappear in a fraction of a second. Yet it was precisely this sense of reality, spreading like an ink drop into a bathtub full of warm water, that held her hostage of the fear she couldn't name. Admonishing herself for being glad to alive had its limit, guilt was as familiar as ever, and the memories were still more painful. And when all such thoughts would be pushed away, she wasn't sure if she deserved this at all.  
  
He looked up and caught her wondering eyes. He smiled briefly. A faint, reserved, and self-deprecating smile.   
  
Saved the world at thirteen, and he had been planning to be a homeless renegade for the rest of his life.   
  
She, in turn, had been planning to marry Scott, a wonderful and sweet man, and would've regretted her decision for the rest of her life.  
  
And now they sat, together, sharing an extravagant dinner of canned corns and beans with jam-dipped biscuits and looking across the small table to each other. She fiddled with the plastic cup of lukewarm bottled water; he shivered underneath the torn jacket he'd been wearing since the day one. He looked so young, so vulnerable.  
  
Just the mere act of watching him broke her heart.  
  
Standing up, she went across their designated cooking area to the makeshift stove, boiled some water, and emptied a pouch she'd found. Quickly she poured the liquid into a mug and handed it to him.  
  
"What is it?" he asked, peering into it with such naked curiosity.  
  
"Hot chocolate. It'll keep you warm."  
  
Guilt was familiar, and she recognized that from his eyes, but she wasn't going to let this chance slip by. It was only a cup of hot chocolate, something that hinted ordinary normalcy. He never had anything that he could call normal, and she could see he wanted it. Awkwardly, yet still wanting it so much. If such little things were all she needed to do to make him happy, she would gladly do anything to provide them.   
  
He had one sip, tasting it and appreciating it, and nodded his thanks. She gave him a small grin in return. Sympathy? Pain? Understanding? She no longer could name whatever emotions he brought out in her.  
  
Silence descended. The clock ticked by. They didn't know what to say. She didn't know what to say.  
  
"You should probably go to bed," he suggested after a long moment, still nursing his cup of hot chocolate as if the very thing was sustaining his life.  
  
"I should," she agreed, still unable to find words that meant anything.  
  
She left him and the silence of the lounge to the silence of the quarter she'd decided to make as hers. She sat on the grey bed, listening. She couldn't hear him outside. Only the low, rhythmic and mechanical hum of the fallout shelter echoed through the grey walls.   
  
She fell asleep to the lullaby of the silence.  
  
When she woke up on the unfamiliar bed, the military-issue white pillow was damp with sweat. The air of her quarter was cool, too cool, yet her hands were clammy. She stared at her hands, and for a moment her head was so light that she couldn't figure out what she was seeing. But then, she felt it instead. The weight of the ring. Scott.   
  
She couldn't take it off, even when she knew now that she wouldn't have married Scott regardless of the end of the world. It seemed like the last of her little things. The big things she could consciously suppress from surfacing, but it was the little, unimportant, irrelevant things and every single cliche in the world that slipped between the cracks as fragments. The sound of birds chirping, the soft fabric of the blanket against her skin as she willed herself to wake up in the morning, Scott's hand on her back, the oak frame picture of her father on the bed table, the scent of coffee filling her kitchen, the white picket fences and daisies in the front garden, the golden sunlight through the beige curtain.   
  
The sunlight. White picket fences and daisies. Scott. Dad.  
  
But she had more important things to remember now. It was impossible not to entertain the notion of nightmare as she opened her eyes to a grey, cracked ceiling that had been greeting her for the last few days, but this was where it had to stop, where she willed herself to swallow the luxury of thoughts she couldn't afford. She now had more important things to remember.  
  
She got up, wrapped herself with a blanket and walked out of her unforgivingly grey quarter. Her bare feet made no sound. She wandered into the lounge like a ghost. One of the many clocks in the control room indicated that it was only two a.m..  
  
The light that was always on in the control room seemed brighter now, and her eyes instinctively found him in the middle.  
  
She watched his eyebrows furrowing in concentration, his fingertips pressing onto a small metal pipe he was holding as if their lives were dependent on its stability. Apparently, what they had in the shelter reserve (guns, guns, and more guns of various nature) were not enough. With leftover scraps of metal and a number of others spread upon the table, John was conjuring up thick grey goo and putting it together into small cylinder metal pipes.   
  
She watched him in silence. It seemed like it was the only thing she was allowed to do, watching him. She had found herself watching him in all of their monotonous yet gut-wrenching waiting moments before this future war against the machines. She watched him because he was the only person there to look, because he was the mystery to be solved, and because everything he did, everything he said was of loneliness. If she hadn't known him as a kid, if she hadn't seen him in the moments of terrifying fears and overwhelming emotions, she would've been tempted to think he was a silent person by nature. But he wore his silence and loneliness like an ill-fitting cloth that was stretched to fit him over the years that he had been forced to come to terms with it. It didn't become him. Not really.  
  
The silence was turning oppressive.  
  
"Hi." She went with the most generic greeting. She couldn't come up with anything else. She didn't dare using anything else.  
  
He looked up. Smiled faintly when his eyes found her leaning against the doorframe. "Couldn't sleep?"  
  
"No," she admitted. Slowly, she approached the desk. "What is it?"  
  
"A pipe bomb, which is a far more effective weapon," he explained expertly. "Explosives we have now are harder to control as they are. They require detonators, but these pipe bombs can be easily used as hand grenades."   
  
She expected something of the sort, but it disquieted her. "Where did you learn to make it?"   
  
"My mother," he said, his eyes focused on the metal cap he was carefully handling. "I was deemed old enough to be making explosives on my eighth birthday. Other things I picked up here and there whenever she hung around with crazy ex-military guys and drug-runners. Up until I was adopted, I thought everyone else lived in the desert like me, learning to how to blow things up."  
  
His loneliness.   
  
It was tragic, just watching him.   
  
Even now, he carried out the task with the pipe bombs silently, and alone. He hadn't asked her to learn this, hadn't asked her to help him. Making these bombs must be necessary, as necessary as inspecting the barrack inventories, the food and medicine details and the thirty-year-old security systems. But these bombs, like the handgun she was supposed to always carry with her, were weapons with destructive purposes. And even though now they could communicate with each other almost without the words and carry out the preparation against the future war together, this he didn't ask of her.   
  
She wasn't sure what she could do, what she was supposed to do. Only, he wasn't supposed to go through this alone. Not this time.   
  
And her cowardice wasn't going to be in the way.   
  
She crossed the space between them, every step slow and measured. When she sat down beside him, in front of the metal pieces that would make up a bomb, he looked up, his bright blue eyes holding a question.  
  
Wordlessly, she picked up a metal piece. It felt cold against her fingertip, pricking her skin. She wondered if this was the sense of loneliness.  
  
"Teach me how," she said.  
  
"Kate," his quiet word stopped her, if only briefly.  
  
"Let me help."  
  
He watched her for a moment with his unfathomable eyes, taking her in. He nodded.   
  
As she ordered her fingers to stay steady as they rolled a thin metal coil that was to be the fuse, not for the first time and not for the last time, she wondered what her supposed place was in this future. In his future. Her self-appointed task of taking care of him might be the only thing keeping her sane, yet it was feeble and unnecessary -- John Connor was definitely able to take care of himself. He was a natural. Gradually and constantly he was shedding off the old, misinformed images of the young delinquent and the homeless junkie who went around breaking into clinics for kicks. He was already a great teacher and leader, knowing when to push, when to give compliment, when to be strict. It became him.   
  
But her? She held the fuse on her hand and thought this hand was all she could offer.  
  
A hand -- worn and battered and scarred -- stopped her trembling hand. John was watching her.  
  
She stared back without asking him why. She only waited.  
  
"As long as we are living, there's a choice," his voice, that hadn't trembled even once when he'd told her the bits and pieces of his past, shook slightly now. "Otherwise there is no point in all this. Kate, you don't have to do this."  
  
She stared at his worn, battered and scarred hand, the hand that she'd already come to know as well as her own. She might have lost many things, but she was still breathing, living. If she lost this hand, she knew the future could just as well end now, and not because it belonged to the savior of the world.   
  
"I'm making a choice," she said.  
  
The moment stilled between them. In silence, she wondered what he was thinking behind those eyes.  
  
Finally, with his hand still on hers, he whispered, "Thank you."   
  
His hand was warm, so warm, and it melted the coldness of her own.  
  
If this hand was all she could offer, she wished it would last for forever to come.


	4. Part 4

4.  
  
It's the anniversary, and, as always, she puts her mom's favorite daisies around the house. That night, she finds her father sitting in the silence of his office, the flower vase and its flowers his only company. His face is turned away from the door so she can't read it, but his posture is odd and strange, and completely unfamiliar.  
  
He is crying.  
  
She lingers at the doorway, her heart breaking as she watches his chest heave and his shoulders tremble. It's been two years, yet she's never seen him break down before, and this is a surprise that takes some moments to comprehend.  
  
He notices her, his hardened face of a soldier rendered only by the tear stains. "I'm sorry, Katie," he says, his voice a little more than a sigh. "I'm so, sorry."  
  
She goes to him, her steps light as feathers. "It's all right," she assures him as softly as possible, putting her arms around his wide shoulders. She pushes away her own tears and swallows the hot lump in her throat, knowing they would only hurt her dad even more.   
  
She's thirteen, and she learns that sometimes you have to be brave for the ones you love, that something like grieving and throwing tantrums have to come second.  
  
Next year, daisies don't make it to her house.

* * *

"The radiation level is still a little too high." Her concern was plain in the way her eyes reflected a dark, sinking shadow of the monitor screen.   
  
"There are protective gears in the barrack," he suggested to her as a compromise, a way of persuasion. "I can suit up before going out."  
  
"Would that provide enough protection? The nuclear fallout they imagined thirty years ago wasn't this."  
  
The concern in her eyes didn't disappear, and John Connor thought about numbers. One might be the loneliest number but it also represented certain freedom. When it became two, little things changed so much that took some time for him to get used to. Any decision he made now had to be shared with and agreed by another person. When his mother had been around, there had been heated arguments, but she had been the militant one, he being the one to press the brake whenever necessary. After that, he hadn't even had anyone around to argue with, no need to share anything with anyone. Now, though, it was a different story. This girl who he had barely known was now here to argue with, to discuss the plans, to decide their future. Together. It made him feel awkward, more than a little lost, and at the same time, oddly comforted. Her steady presence.   
  
Or enforced presence. After all, she didn't have any choice. Just like he didn't. He was perfectly aware that her presence was never a given, not something to be taken granted, just because it was supposedly written in the stars.   
  
A healthy female of the breeding age, Uncle Bob had said.  
  
Right. The very idea made his head spin, and it was getting harder to tighten his grip on that particular wheel.  
  
He checked the monitor one more time, tapping at the screen. It only fizzled with snowcrash. "We have no defense mechanism except the surveillance, and this isn't going to cut it. The cameras outside have to be repaired. The radiation is low enough, and I won't stay outside for long."  
  
Kate might be a lot like his mother, but she was a levelheaded one of the two. She held her voice powerfully and always dispensed her reason that allowed no objection. "Even if it is too soon for Skynet to have assembled and mobilized its army, you don't know what's out there. It's too early to take such an unnecessary risk."  
  
"We have to be able to see what's going on outside, Kate," he said, unable to counter her points but still making his point. "Before the system is up. Now is better than later." And if they didn't do it now, they might never be able to. He didn't have to say the last part out loud -- she already knew.  
  
"I know." A small frown was crowding her face. "It doesn't mean I have to like it."  
  
He could read from her expression that she'd go out instead of him if only she knew how to fix the cameras. He was very much glad that she didn't. "I don't either," he agreed.  
  
She let out an inaudible sigh. "All right, let's try. I'll keep on monitoring."  
  
He packed the tools and the replacement parts, hoping they were enough. She helped him suit up in the yellow plastic gear that made him feel oddly vulnerable in spite of its purpose.   
  
"I look like an astronaut," he commented a little sourly.  
  
"What, you didn't dream of being one as a boy?" she teased, strapping him with the equipment and checking occasionally with the how-to booklet that seemed to come with everything here. They had long since decided that if they could ever come across whoever had designed this place, he or she would be receiving more than just a simple thank-you.  
  
"I wanted to be an Olympic skater," he deadpanned.  
  
She stopped, apparently considering whether to take him seriously or not. "You're kidding."  
  
"I lived on a desert, the last thing I wanted to be was a military leader, and Alaska always seemed like a tempting option."  
  
He achieved his mission of the moment when she grinned at his flippant remark, and he relaxed slightly as he stepped into the exit elevator.   
  
"I'll be here when you come back, to decontaminate you," she said, her hand on the control pad. She opened her lips to add something, but whatever it had been, she swallowed it. She only murmured, "Be careful."   
  
He saw her face through the transparent plastic and smiled a little, for her sake. He nodded.  
  
The elevator closed with a whoosh, separating them with a thirty centimeter of metal. Her face disappeared, and he almost reached out his hand but stopped himself in time. It took forever to ascend to the ground level, each second widening the distance between them. He didn't like it.  
  
And he also didn't like his sentimentality of the late. He had to focus on the task at hand. He checked the radiation meter and decided it wasn't high enough to be lethal. He prepared the equipment and got himself ready as much as the restricted movements of the protective gear allowed him.  
  
But he had not been ready for the sight as he walked out the barricade door.  
  
The scent of death was pervasive.  
  
He couldn't smell anything like this, yet it was everywhere. Dust, dust, the dead dust. There were blurred outlines of everything, and nothing. The mountains that he knew to be there lost all the greens, and he saw nothing but the grey brown that covered the surface of the earth. There was no sound except his breathing that echoed around the helmet. The world he could see through the transparent plastic was dead.  
  
He wondered if his mother had seen this in her nightmares. A tiny part of his mind was glad that she wasn't here to witness this as reality. Mostly, however, he felt her absence in his bones with every dust blowing against his protected body.  
  
_/John, can you hear me?/_  
  
He almost jumped at the sudden intrusion that broke the still silence. "Kate?" he tested his voice.  
  
_/Good, the microphone's still working,/_ her voice, thick with static, hissed through the positively antique wire connected to the helmet. _/Are you all right?/  
_  
"Yes," he said, collecting himself. "I'm fine." Her voice seemed to have saved him from the inconsolable anguish. Enforced or not, she was here.  
  
And that had to be enough.   
  
He located the camera panel exactly where the blueprint had indicated it would be. The outer sockets were completely fried, but the inner ones seemed intact. He exchanged the outlet, rewired the monitor camera with the spare. The old training given by his mother returned to him with ease and he operated the panel without much difficulty. His familiarity with antique machines was ironically what was helping them the most right now.   
  
_/I can see you on screen,/_ Kate's voice fizzled back a moment later when he closed the panel and finished the rewiring.  
  
"Great. Good to know that I actually know what I'm doing." He rushed to the next panel, only glancing at the surroundings and trying not to be drawn by the tragically mesmerizing dust wind hovering over the horizon.   
  
_/Slow down, John,/_ her voice echoed back. _/You're gonna sprain your ankle again that way./  
_  
So the monitor really was working. It was great news, but he suddenly wondered if it was going to be like this. Him going off to do something reckless yet necessary, her worrying over him all the time. Probably. It didn't seem like they would ever have a bright, fun future together. But no one on earth would have a bright future for a long, long time. Some of them had no future at all.  
  
"Don't worry," he said, forcing cheer into his voice. "I have a good doctor taking care of me."  
  
_/Keep this up, and I'll have to let you suffer next time,/_ her voice admonished with mock warning. Since they both knew it wasn't true, her threat had no effect.  
  
He finished rewiring of three more cameras within an hour and came back safely. After being showered with decontaminating chemicals, he let himself slip into a luxury of hot shower. When he felt the scent of death had been properly washed away, he returned to the control room.  
  
"They're all working perfectly," she reported, switching the feedback on the main screen from one camera to another. "Do you feel all right?"  
  
Afraid that she would insist on another check-up, he answered quickly, "Never been better. That C2 camera works on all angles?"  
  
"270 degree, but between four of them, they cover every ground of that entrance."  
  
Not completely satisfactory, but it had to do for now. "What next?"  
  
She checked the list of to-do's they'd gone over and marked one off. "Repairing the second entrance."  
  
"I'll go pick up what we need."  
  
Her eyes met his, and she nodded and turned to the station. He was half on his way when he felt compelled to turn around. Pulled by a strange premonition, and maybe the never-dying sentimentality, he lingered, watching her as she frowned at the nuclear fallout contingency plans and the radiation level. There was something about the look on her face that seemed so familiar. And aching.  
  
The thought stopped him on track. He suddenly remembered where he had seen it. That sadness.   
  
This was going to draw an endless circle, wasn't it? He really hadn't learned anything from his experience. The dark circles under her eyes were prominent, but he had easily taken those signs as the understandable and acceptable aftermath of grief and hadn't given a second thought.  
  
Numbers. One and two. One was familiar to him, one was everything, yet after learning what it was like to be two, could he go back being one? Would he want to? The idea scared him more than he could ever admit.  
  
But, what then? Let her wither away because he was too scared to reach out his hand?

This had to stop.

"Let's take a break," he said bluntly, and she whirled around to him, startled. "A proper break. From everything."  
  
There was a quiet surprise on her face. "A break?"  
  
"We've been working all the time. Thinking too much of...all of this. It's suffocating. We need a break." He didn't exactly say it was because they might not have any time at all in the upcoming future.   
  
"What exactly would we do?" she asked, suddenly uncertain.  
  
He had no idea. He shrugged. "Nothing. Anything. You choose."  
  
As if there was anything to do in this place. But just as suddenly, something must have come to her mind. "There is one thing," she said, her thoughtful look only rendered by embarrassment that rarely came to her face. "It's...silly."  
  
"Anything," he assured her.  
  
Thus occurred their next mission, which entailed a pair of scissors, a shaving blade, a mirror, a towel and John sitting on a chair in front of her.  
  
John, somehow roped into this project, mildly protested as he stared himself on the mirror and felt his chin, "I don't know about this."  
  
"You said anything goes," she said. "I wanted to do this from the very moment I laid my eyes on your stubble."  
  
Had he looked that bad? "Please tell me I don't look like a twelve-year-old now."  
  
"But that'd be a lie." She was definitely, positively, suppressing a smile. A lovely and genuine grin, and he realized he never had any choice in the matter.  
  
"Right," he sighed tragically, suppressing a smile. "This face would definitely strike inspiration on no one's heart. Isn't this supposed to be the face of the future resistance leader or something?"  
  
"I wouldn't know. Couldn't see anything underneath the stubble," she replied sagely.  
  
Upstaged, John kept his mouth shut while she adjusted the towel around his shoulder. Soon he felt her fingertips skating around his hair. With her every movement reflecting through the mirror, the entire moment was strangely surreal, but not necessarily unpleasant.   
  
He watched her on the mirror, her eyes and her hands and the scissors, and thought about numbers.  
  
A few minutes later she was finished. She took away the towel and brushed away the hair from his shoulders. "The verdict, your honor?"  
  
John stood up from their provisional barber station, fingered a lock of his now shorter hair and inspected himself on the mirror. His clean-shaven youthful face did undeniably make him look about twelve. "Okay, so not as bad as I had feared," he admitted.  
  
"Oh, you're welcome."   
  
She looked like she could just bubble up with laughter, and he, too, had to smile. "You're pretty natural with scissors. Done this a lot for Scott?"  
  
A second after the name escaped from his lips, he realized his mistake. She covered it quickly, but he saw her expression falter briefly and darkly. After a frozen moment, she said, "No."  
  
He waited, but she offered no explanation except her silence. Too many resemblances, he thought. Way too many. But it didn't seem like now was the time. He wanted to rescue both of them, and he did. "What next?" he asked brightly.  
  
She smiled a little. If this was a pretense, at least she seemed game to go along with him. "Your turn."  
  
He considered the idea as if he was trying to figure out a battle scenario in his head. "I don't know. Eating?"  
  
"Something other than the canned beans, you mean."  
  
"That's the idea. Something different. Something extravagant, even."  
  
"Cheesecake," she said, as if that word meant everything.  
  
He blinked. "Cheesecake?"   
  
"Cheesecake," she repeated.  
  
"I never had it."   
  
Kate's expression was carefully blank for a moment, as if she was digesting the new information slowly. As if she was telling herself repeatedly just to understand the mystery that John Connor had never had a piece of cheesecake in his life. "Let's go," she said with enough resolution that would teach a lesson or two to the T-X.  
  
He let her drag him. "Where to?"  
  
"We're going to find some preserved strawberries."  
  
Which they did. They ended up in their designated cooking area with several cans and powder pouches, enfolded in the weird sense of domesticity that was new to him. New to her too, if the softly confused look on her face was any evidence. Guilt was familiar, but she didn't seem to let it bother her. For the moment, he, too, didn't let it get to him.  
  
"I take it your mother wasn't overly occupied with cooking?" she asked as they both stared, awed, at the beige mixture baking in the makeshift oven that didn't look too different from the grey mixture they had handled to make pipe bombs.   
  
He stopped stirring reddish jell-o that was supposed to be strawberry syrup. He almost chuckled. "She cooked nothing but bombs. She once told me she'd been a waitress when she met my father, but frankly? I've never been able to picture her like that."  
  
"I don't think I'd be dazzling you with overly domestic talent any time soon, either," she said, carefully opening the oven. "I'm really not sure about the shape of the cake."  
  
He peeked over her shoulder to glimpse at the result of their labor. It seemed to be a little on the octagonal side without any distinct edges with a layer of burned crust on top. They executed a clumsy rescue of the cake from the oven. He had to hide a grin as he helped her turn the cake into a plastic plate. Kate frowned at it as if she could change it just by staring.   
  
"You know," he said innocently, "I think I might've had something like this. Once, at a homeless shelter. Tasted like rubber."  
  
"Stop grinning," she chided him.  
  
"Am not."  
  
She shot him a glare.  
  
He gave her an innocent look. "Honestly, not grinning. Must be something in the eye."  
  
She ribbed him with her elbow playfully and proceeded to cut two pieces out of the steaming cake. "What was it like? Living on the street?" she asked, handing him one plate. Her question invited another revelation of his life. His life. Never hers.  
  
Numbers. One and two.   
  
No, he didn't want to be one again.  
  
"I want to know more about yours," he said.  
  
She didn't freeze this time, but her effort was apparent. "My life was the epitome of normalcy up until I met you."  
  
She couldn't tell him. She wouldn't tell him all these things, even when she was still broken by grief.  
  
There was only one thing left to do. He took out from his jacket pocket a photograph that meant the life to him and handed it to her. She slowly took it and looked up, a question in her eyes. "My mother," he offered simply.  
  
Kate fingered the jaded and wrinkled photograph, her eyes on the strong, lost face of the woman in it. "She's beautiful," she breathed. 'Was' should have been the word, not 'is', but John took no notice. This was the only reminder left to him of his mother, something, if the future was really set, that would be handed down to Kyle Reese.  
  
He sank on the floor, and a moment later, Kate did the same. They set the photograph in between. He could feel her gaze on his face.  
  
"She was always this beautiful. Strong. But I rarely got to see her like this soft and gentle," he told Kate. "She had always been so hard outside, trying to be strong and unfeeling and trying to take over my burden for me whenever she could, to protect me. But see, she was already strong. She just was. She didn't have to be anything different from who she had always been. She would shoot unflinchingly and deal with despicable people, but she couldn't murder someone in cold blood, not even to stop Judgment Day, and so she broke down and told me she loved me. And I've never seen her stronger than in that moment. I've never loved her more."  
  
He looked up. He saw in Kate what he saw in the photo. He didn't want anyone to wear that look again.  
  
"Kate, you said I should be myself. You said that would just be enough. It has to go both ways. My mother, she was bottling it all up, all for me, all for my survival. I can't see that again."  
  
Kate was watching him, her expression so fragile that he thought she'd break with a single touch.   
  
"Tell me," he asked, just barely above a whisper.   
  
He wanted to hear her story because her life had been the one of normalcy. He wanted to hear her story because he needed her to tell him. And because she needed him to hear it. She told him about high school, dating failures, college, why she became a veterinarian, how she met Scott, the white picket fences and the daisies. John held onto her every word, absorbed every syllable, with laughter and tears that came with funny anecdotes and mini tragedies that existed in everyone's life.  
  
"You still remember," he told her. "You still have them."  
  
With every tear fallen, the grief that swept her seemed to melt, little by little. There were always things to remember.  
  
They sat all night, the space between them filled with a mingled cheesecake and a faded photograph.  
  
And when the quiet static from the radio broke into a desperate voice, desperate and hurt and in need of guidance and a leader, when his destiny called for him, John Connor was no longer alone.  
  
_/Hello? Is anyone out there? ...Anyone?/_  
  
John Connor stood up. Instead the speaker button, he reached for her hand, and she took his.  
  
It began. 


	5. Part 5

Thanks for the amazing feedback, every single one of them.   
  
This is where the tide turns. Hope this (longer and definitely more headache-inducing) part can actually meet the expectations. ;)

* * *

5.  
  
The sunrays blaze down at the construction site, where flying dust and sand occupy the air instead of oxygen. He's carried about a thousand bricks this morning, and by the lunch hour, he's broken into utter exhaustion. His body is used to intense labors, yet the sun seems particularly unbearable today, wearing him down just by quietly burning up the earth.  
  
He sinks down on one of the steel parts strewn on the site, and another worker -- Joe? Jack? -- drifts to his side. The man, middle-aged with the skin as dark as his black eyes, sits beside him without asking for permission and offers a smoke without a word. John declines. The only vice John Connor lets himself enjoy is speed. He thinks of speed as an essential item for survival and lets himself get away from the scrutiny of his overseeing superego that always keeps its reins tightly with responsibility, fate, and duty.  
  
But hell with them. Hell with them all. It's gone, anyway. His supposed destiny, gone with a dunk of Uncle Bob into the boiling metal. All gone. Nothing to stop him from becoming nothing.  
  
"What's your story?" Joe-Jack asks while taking in the smoke like it was sustaining his very life.  
  
"What?" John has been to too many construction sites actually tocount, but has never come across an extended conversation with anyone. No one wants to talk to one another when all they share in life is bone-grinding misery.   
  
"No drifter in his right mind says no to a cigarette," Joe-Jack observes and turns to him indifferently, "What's your story?"  
  
John almost smiles. As far as he can see, he has two options. I saved the world at thirteen and everything went downhill from there. Or, I'm a schizophrenic with a bad dose of Cassandra Syndrome.  
  
Or there is the third. Which might as well be the truth now.  
  
"No story," he opts for the third. He blows away the dust from his hand. "I'm nothing."

* * *

She wasn't sure exactly when, but at one point Kate began to sort the elements of her new life into categories. Just like computers, a human brain seemed unable to process everything unless things were categorized into groups, processed into routines. Things that do, things that don't. Things that she could bear, things that she couldn't. She was now trying to categorize things such as love and hope, desperation and despair. She had had them once, all nicely shaped and tucked away, yet just as she had gotten used to the idea, the seemingly unbreakable routine of life changed, turned upside down. She had figured things out soon after, though, found a little peace of mind. With John.  
  
But that all seemed to change once again as she watched the arrival of the Carson family.   
  
The Carson family, the first people they'd talked through the radio, and the first who'd come to Crystal Peak in the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe, the very first addition to the Resistance.  
  
"It was a pure luck," Ralph Carson's voice shook badly as he explained his family's extremely fortunate survival. "I mean, when we bought that house, we just thought it was neat that the house built in 60s included a bomb shelter basement, never once thought to use it. Even when we heard those...deafening bangs, we didn't even think... I mean, what were we supposed to think? We thought, maybe an earthquake somewhere far away or somethin'. We were just standing there, then Keith -- he was always hanging about in the basement -- shouted at me and Marybeth to come downstairs. We did, close the steel door, and a second later the world came tumbling down. We stayed there until we realized it was either dying by dehydration and starvation, or withering in radiation sickness, or whatever we could catch. So we took our chance, came out, it was all okay, but no one in our town was alive. No one. We checked every place. Everything seemed to be in cinder. Think we were about 15 miles away from the direct blast, and everything was sinking in cinder. Does that make sense? How does that make sense?"  
  
John quietly listened while she tended to Marybeth, Ralph's wife, and Keith, their surviving teenage son. It seemed rather miraculous that their most serious injuries were hydration and malnutrition.  
  
"We wouldn't have known what to do if we didn't hear your voice on the radio," Ralph thanked them over the prompt dinner that took place. "I mean, stupid of us, but at first we were thinking maybe we were the only ones. And that wouldn't have been pretty. Just us and Keith, left to populate Earth like Noah and damn Ark. 'cept we had no ark, and that'd been just damn inconvenient."  
  
Ralph was too good-humored for a man who'd lived through Judgment Day. Marybeth was the exact opposite, frazzled beyond descriptions, speaking barely a few words at once. For Keith, numbness seemed to be the most direct effect of the trauma.  
  
She watched with an odd feeling as the Carson family began to occupy the shelter, her shelter, her and John's. It was good and bad and indescribable altogether, seeing the actual, living and breathing people. She treated their various little injuries, set them to their quarters, watched them eat, listened to their talk. But the meaning of the word 'hope' lessened gradually as she watched Keith, Ralph and Marybeth and began to wonder who, if any, would survive through the war.  
  
The war would be long. People would die. Many of them would die. And if she was already seeing some of them as dead, how could she go through this? It was already wearying her down. She thought about Sarah Connor, how she'd lived with the knowledge of the imminent deaths of the billions. She didn't have the half of the strength.   
  
And John.  
  
John. He was already transforming, the edges around his face and soul sharpening, the playful smiles now seldom seen. The great leader with the burden of the world. It was sadly appropriate, somehow.  
  
"We have a problem." After the few days spent for the Carsons to settle in, John came to her to discuss the situation.  
  
"The people," she said, having already expected it and admonishing herself for not wishing to talk about it.  
  
"Yes. People are coming out from the hidings now, and they'll all try to go where other people are," he said. "They'll try to build the world again, and Skynet knows that. It will send machines after the large groups, and they'll die, just like that. They need to be told about Skynet as soon as possible."  
  
She agreed with the basics of his plan, but not details. She was by now used to countering John's points. Skynet might not know about John and what he'd do in the future right now, and might not even care about some people talking on the radio wavelength, but the moment John spoke the word Skynet in wideband, it was going to be paying him a lot of attention. It'd track down the source of the broadcast and come after him.   
  
When she told him that, his answer was simply, "We have to take that risk."  
  
_Will he always be this reckless? _ She wasn't looking forward to her role in the future, if or when she would come to act the second-in-command. "We're not taking that risk."  
  
"I--"  
  
"We're not, and you know it."  
  
John didn't argue that point. Instead, he raked his hair with his fingers in one gesture full of frustration. "Okay, then we scramble the signal. Kate, if we don't do something to at least warn these people, they're all going to be heading for the slaughterhouse. We can't just do nothing."  
  
She repressed the urge to sigh. She had known this was coming, even though the very idea gave her some serious headache to contend with. The real trouble, however, was convincing the Carsons.   
  
"You mean, some damn machine did this? Some machine sent those bombs?" Ralph was, if not dumbfounded, outrageous by the idea. Marybeth, just recovering from dehydration, had an expression on her face that matched her husband's.  
  
"An AI," John explained, undaunted by their reaction. "A very intelligent AI."  
  
"But that's impossible."  
  
John exchanged a look with Kate. If they couldn't convince the family who seemed to trust them with their lives, they'd never convince the world until it would be too late.  
  
"It's not impossible, Dad," Keith, who had so far just been listening with a blank look, suddenly came alive. He leaned over the desk on the control room with a look of sparked interest. "A computer system becoming sentient to this extreme degree seems a little out there, but not at all impossible. It's just that... I mean, okay, so let's assume it's all true. Then once you set up a Net system to scramble the signal from this base, how would you stop this Skynet from hacking back into your system?"  
  
John actually smiled a little. It was as if they spoke the same language. "I know a way," he said, then turned to Ralph and Marybeth, who were staring at their son with a look of pure surprise. "And I think I could use your son's help on this. Keith, you ever used a trap door to hack into another system?"  
  
"Of course, but... Oh, I see where you're getting at," Keith suddenly beamed. "You're talking about isolated cyberspace, not controlled by this Skynet?"  
  
"Keith," Marybeth now stood beside her son, snapping his shoulder, "Don't tell me in all the time you spent at the basement with those friends you've been...hacking! Doing illegal things!"  
  
"Mum, it wasn't illegal!"  
  
"Oh, for Pete's sake, of course it was illegal!"  
  
"...so what? You gonna ground me? Another time-out? I'm sixteen!"  
  
Kate stood beside John, not sure if it was appropriate to chuckle. She noted there was a faint smile on John's face, and, maybe even a slight envy at the rather off-the-chart display of maternal instinct. John turned to Ralph, who refused to get involved in this bickering. "Always like this?"  
  
"You have no idea," Ralph said, masking the apparent embarrassment. "Well, at least Marybeth seems less frazzled."  
  
"Marybeth," John interrupted before Keith and Marybeth fully broke into the tuck-of-war, "Before grounding anyone, just think for a second that your son might be able to save some serious lives. And Keith, since it's unlikely you'll ever be grounded in the future, will you help me to set up the system?"  
  
Marybeth stopped midway from slapping Keith's shoulder again. Keith seemed to suddenly shrink at the idea. "Uh, there has to be...I don't know, this would be like creating a whole new isolated cyberspace, and I don't even..."  
  
John took a step closer, his hand on the younger man's shoulder. "Keith, I know you can. _You_ know you can."

One brief look at John's face, and the panic in Keith seemed to recede. He believed John. Even Ralph and Marybeth seemed to believe in him. Kate watched with something close to amazement. John probably wasn't even aware of his own gift that seemed to be slowly returning to him, his magical gift that got everyone else to follow him, trust him.  
  
"Wait, the computers under the fallout radius wouldn't be working at all," Keith said with sudden realization. "EM waves alone would've destroyed everything."   
  
John had thought of this already. "We have to go outside the blast area and find a cable that isn't destroyed. It's a matter of connecting it."  
  
"You mean someone has to go out there again," Ralph surmised, his expression darkening. Marybeth held her son's arm even tighter.  
  
"I'll go," Kate said, almost without thinking. There was a brief silence. The Carsons weren't actually looking at her. Rather, they were looking at John, who, in turn, was watching her with an inscrutable expression. She added hastily, "And before you say anything, John, you're certainly not going anywhere."  
  
John crossed his arms. "And why not?"  
  
"You have to stay here with Keith to get the system running. And as their doctor, I can tell you that Marybeth and Ralph need to stay put for a while." She didn't need to explain all this to John. He knew this better than she did. She suddenly realized he must be feeling exactly what she'd felt when he had gone up to the ground level to fix the surveillance. "So, I'll go. Tell me what to do."  
  
He might know all this, but he sighed and ran a hand down his face, a sign of reined weakness that he was showing less and less. She felt his weariness down to his bone, yet he said nothing.   
  
In an impulse, she took off the engagement ring from her finger and handed it to John.  
  
He felt it on his palm for a second. The alarm in his eyes was mild, yet still present. "Why?"  
  
"Keep it safe," she said. It was only a half of an answer.   
  
She watched him put her ring into his pocket and came up with another definition of the word 'hope.' The hope for the mankind was John Connor.  
  
He'd told her once he didn't want her to be strong for him, but he was already doing his best to be strong for everyone. She wanted to be the one he didn't have to be strong for.

But how?

Three days later, she still didn't find any answers.  
  
And she was standing outside.  
  
Two days away in distance and eternity away in time from Crystal Peak, she was only stopping her truck to check the overheated engine on her way back, trapped in the red and grey twilight that wasn't really a twilight, in a setting that would've put Mad Max scenery to shame, when she heard the sound.  
  
At first, she thought she'd imagined it. It was faint, fading, and almost inaudible, but at the second time around, she recognized it as from another human being, not from the dust wind shattering across the remains of a small town's main streets. She tensed, her hand automatically reaching for her gun.  
  
She hadn't expected to actually meet anyone on her very first post-Judgment Day excursion to outside. This area was outside the fallout radius but still an unlikely setting for anyone to have survived or have stayed or even pass through.   
  
Then again, if there was indeed a survivor, this person would her help. Desperately.  
  
That settled it. The fallout hadn't reached this far, at least not in its entirety, but she moved out after checking that the residual radioactivity was minimal. She carefully stepped over the building debris and the dust that plagued everywhere to trace the voice. She could make out the name of the building ("_Chris Bak Loan & Trust_") as she walked over a broken marble frontpiece. Beyond the labyrinth of broken steelframes and concrete walls of once-a-bank building, she heard a faint yell. That yell soon turned into a long, loud scream, and Kate was startled into hurrying her steps.   
  
"...Hello?" her voice came out croaked, her word alien to her own ears that hadn't heard any voices, not even her own, for three days. Her 'hello' echoed back in emptiness unanswered. The scream was still ringing in the background.  
  
Experimentally, she stepped closer. The scream got louder.  
  
She maneuvered her way into the large clearing that was surrounded in by the collapsed walls. There was an enormous steel gate silently dusting in the corner against the only wall that was miraculously left standing. She assumed it must've been the basement vault of the bank. At the far side of the corner, she counted oddly out of place masses of rubbles that were set apart from the collapsed walls. The four of them were in the shape of small mounds. Just when she was attempting to figure out their purpose, the scream got louder.  
  
It was, she realized, was coming from underneath the vault. She saw a smudge of a black hair edging just behind the steel.  
  
"Are you hurt?" she shouted, rushing across the distance with her weapon secured around her waist. "Are you all right?"  
  
The scream didn't stop.  
  
She paused in front of the vault and kneeled to look into the small opening. She was almost afraid to look inside, but more afraid not to. She looked into the small space that the steel and the wall was creating.  
  
The scream was coming from a little black-haired boy. Ten? Eleven? She couldn't even clearly see his face that was smudged with dirt and hints of blood, and he was paying no attention to her as he continued to scream his heart out.  
  
Unsure of what to do, she lifted her hand to hold his small shoulder. She shook it gently. "It's all right, it's all right... Shhh, it's all right."  
  
He jumped so hard when her hand reached his hand that she was suddenly fearful that he'd break the still momentum between the standing wall and the vault gate. His eyes were wild and haunted, and he didn't seem to really see her. But, at last, he stopped screaming.   
  
"Can you move?" she asked softly, her hand still on his and her heart already breaking all over for him.  
  
Nothing. He tried move his lips but nothing came out.  
  
"Let's get you out of there," she decided and tried to smile at the boy. In the most gentle manner she could manage, she pulled him out, grabbing his too-thin body. The boy struggled, but he didn't seem repelled to the idea of leaving the dark and dingy hole.  
  
When he safely made out, he was still only staring at an unseen point, his mouth agape. In her short years as a veterinarian, she'd never treated any animal with radiation sickness, but still she could still tell the symptoms when she saw one, and she detected no signs of serious radiation exposure from the boy. No blood on his body except on his face, and she was certain the dried blood wasn't his. There were scratches all over him, but none of them left a serious gash.  
  
"It's okay," she said, although nothing could possibly be okay. "You're okay. I'm not going to hurt you."  
  
A full minute of staring later, his eyes suddenly snapped into focus. Then, he began screaming. Again.  
  
And Kate suddenly felt lost. For a short second, her heart wished someone were with her. Someone. Not just anyone. _John_. And for that second of wandering she immediately admonished herself. Weak. How weak she was, even now.  
  
She put her hands on the boy's each shoulder, knowing her attempts to calm him down was failing in every way. "What's wrong?" God, what was she asking? Everything was wrong. "Where does it hurt? Tell me, you have to tell me--"  
  
"They're all dead!" the boy shrieked, "They're all dead!"  
  
They were significant and painfully appropriate as the first words. Kate consoled herself that at least the boy hadn't been rendered mute from the shock.   
  
"But you're not," she said finally.  
  
"What does it matter? They're _dead_!"  
  
She didn't ask who 'they' were. She could already very well guess. "And you're alive."  
  
The boy stopped. His eyes were little more focused now as they found her face. "What does it mean? They're dead, and I'm...what does it mean?"  
  
The boy's voice was anguished, desperate and incredibly destroyed. Hope, hope. What was the use of hope when you couldn't find it? "It means a lot of things," she lied. "It means...are you hungry?"  
  
Despite the bull-headedness the boy had demonstrated in finding out the answer, the very mention of food understandably seemed to appeal to him.  
  
She led him to the safety inside her truck while the boy followed her in a haze. She wondered just how he'd survived, but first things were always first. She checked him for any visible injuries, under his squirming and protesting, and sat him in the passenger seat before giving him a packed meal and water.  
  
"I'm Kate," she offered when the boy slowed down after gulping down everything at once.  
  
The boy looked up, his brown eyes reflecting curiosity and suspicion now that his stomach was at relative ease. "Jeffie. No, Jeff."  
  
Underneath all the filth, there was a face of a young, oh so very young boy that must have been graced with many mischievous grins not so long ago. For no reason at all, she wondered how his last Christmas must been like among his family and friends, before all this. She tried to smile. "Hi, Jeff."   
  
Merely stating his name had an effect on him. He dropped his food pouch and looked away. If there were tears in his eyes, he didn't show them.  
  
"Do you want to tell me what happened?" she asked despite her own thought that told her it was too premature to question.  
  
Jeff kept his silence, looking out the window, to beyond the field of ruins.  
  
So that was a 'no' to talking. All right, so they still had some time to talk things over, although not here. She had done what she'd come to do, and she had to go now or others would be even more worried. John would be worried. She wouldn't have that.  
  
"I'm heading back to where I came from," she said, handing Jeff another bottle of lukewarm water. "Do you want to come with me?"  
  
The boy turned to her sharply. "Where did you come from?"  
  
"A shelter. About two days away."  
  
Jeff stared back at the ruins, his eyes unfathomable.   
  
"Will you come?" Whatever his answer might be, she wasn't about to leave him here. But Jeff saved her the trouble of the potential struggle by nodding almost imperceptibly a few minutes of silence later.  
  
They drove in silence. Jeff stared at the ruined bank until it became smaller and smaller and finally disappeared from the sight. Soon later, he uneasily fell asleep in the passenger seat, and she drove through the evening twilight, and eventually to the darkness of the unlit road. Of the many things that reminded her of this surreal reality, it was this complete lack of light she'd had trouble getting used to. Before, when the world hadn't been dead, there were always lights, somewhere, anywhere. Now, there was no light anywhere that she could see. Not even the moonlight. Only the headlight of the truck guided her path back to Crystal Peak.  
  
The highway, or the thing that had been a highway in its previous existence, was far from a smooth path. The truck creaked and thudded against the rough asphalt, violently shaking whenever it hit debris. The boy, amazing enough, slept through every bump. Briefly glancing at the boy's infinitely tired face, she was glad to have provided him a little bit of safety. That small bit of happiness lasted only for a moment, though, because she then had to wonder if she could continue to do just that, keep him safe.  
  
She stopped the truck when she reached the next town. She decided to go around the area next morning and parked near a stripped chunk of stones that used to be a house.  
  
The absence of the engine's hum woke up Jeff, and he stirred and turned to her. "We have to stop to rest a little before going into this area," she explained. Jeff nodded without real effort of understanding and slipped back into sleep. She tucked him under her blanket.  
  
Kids adapted strangely fast. Regrettably, she wasn't one. She knew she needed to get a little sleep before the dawn came, even when she hadn't been able to for the last few days outside Crystal Peak. She tried again, leaning against the seat and wrestling with a thin blanket to keep herself warm.   
  
The sky. Whenever she opened her eyes after futile attempts at inviting the sleep that refused to come, there was always the night sky that quietly glowered in complete silence. It was grey-black, not dark indigo, and the thick blanket of grey dust covered the most space, no star to be found between. She imagined looking down Earth from the space, Earth where machines would be the only things crawling on it. Here be monsters. In this battered aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse, she was seeing a vision even more tragic, even more fearful, even more apocalyptic.

Sleep. She had to sleep.  
  
The driver seat squeaked in protest as she tried to find another comfortable position. Her jacket definitely didn't make a very good pillow. She tried using the back of her hand instead and acutely felt the absence of the ring on her finger. The ring, the last connection she'd had with the world.  
  
But the world was dead. She knew it now. There was no her world to go back to. It was one thing to understand with her head before coming out here, and something else to witness it, like this, now.  
  
The shelter was no longer keeping her safe, keeping her and John safe. They had to be out here from now on. This outside. The outside was where the battles had to be held.  
  
The battles of which John would have to be in the middle.   
  
She looked at Jeff. Would this boy survive to see the end if there was one? And John? Just because John was supposed to save the world, it didn't mean he would live to see the end. What of that T-850 had said? John was going to be killed by him. By _it_. But if John would die to save the mankind, was the sacrifice worth it? How did one measure a life? His life?  
  
John, she knew, was certainly ready to make every kind of sacrifice necessary.   
  
She'd known the day was coming since the radio had come alive with the voices, the voices that had reached out for other survivors, a leader, that John would be in it. John, a great leader and a boy in still many ways. John Connor had to be in the war for all the mankind, yet she didn't want him to be.   
  
But it had never been up to her. Keeping him from it all had never been up to her. And she never felt it as acutely as now, when she looked at the future battlefield.  
  
The very idea of hope was drifting away. It was now foreign and alien, defying any category that she could create.  
  
"Kate?" a small voice stirred her back to reality, and she saw the boy staring at her, now awake and curious.  
  
She sat up straight, blinking away what might have been tears on her face. "What is it, Jeff?"  
  
"Who else is in that shelter that we're going to?" he asked, uncertain.  
  
As brave as he was, Jeff was still afraid. She tried to smile. "For a while, there were only me and my friend John. Then some time ago a family joined us. Ralph, Marybeth, and Keith. Keith's probably five, six years older than you. So that makes five."  
  
The idea of meeting four new people didn't seem to scare him as much. Jeff thought it over. "'kay, then why did you come to my town? Nobody came. I mean, no one."  
  
This was harder to explain. "Well, we needed to connect the computers from outside to the ones inside our shelter, so I came out and installed connectors. I was on the way back when I heard you."  
  
There was a thoughtful frown on Jeff's face. "Aren't all computers dead?"  
  
Oh, how she wished they were. "Not all of them." And the biggest and the meanest one was still out there, just waiting for them to emerge from the hidings.  
  
God. How she wanted to just take John and run away from it all. That'd be the end of the world, but she scared herself by thinking that she wouldn't much care as long as he would be all right.  
  
No, it wasn't the truth. She would let John fight and die to see Jeff, Keith, Marybeth, Ralph, and so many of them alive, to see the mankind alive and well. That'd be what she would do, wouldn't it? When she'd reprogram the assassin who'd killed her supposed husband and commander and send it back to the past, to now?  
  
Too many thoughts. Too many glimpses into the future that defied categories. She wanted a good cry, but even that was no longer allowed on her self-imposed role in John's future.  
  
Then, for the second time that day, she heard another sound that snapped her into attention.  
  
"Kate?" Jeff asked, his eyes suddenly wide.  
  
"Listen," she whispered to Jeff, turning around anxiously to locate the source of that mechanical sound. The sound of a moving vehicle.   
  
"Something's coming," Jeff said, his hand nervously tugging at her jacket.  
  
The sound stopped a little farther out. Kate frantically turned on the ignition. The flashlight showed there was nothing in front of them except the ruins of a house that hid too many shadows. Her hand went for the gun. It couldn't be HKs already. Skynet couldn't have mobilized its army this fast. It should've--  
  
Footsteps. There were definitely footsteps against the rubbles, coming from the back.  
  
She took a gamble and opened the window of the truck. "Who's there? Show yourself!"  
  
"Kate?"  
  
Once her breathing returned to the semi-normal speed, she put down her gun. "God, John. You frightened me."  
  
John emerged from the darkness like a mirage. He, too, put down his weapon and approached the truck in careful, slow steps. Once he saw her clearly, he rushed to her in a few leaps instead of steps. "Are you all right?"  
  
"Now I am," she said, opening the door and letting herself out. "What are you doing here? The system--"  
  
There was a small, relieved smile on his face, and she realized she had missed it. Too much. "It's working greatly, of course," he said, leaning against the truck and just watching her. "Keith's on it since you connected the relay yesterday. How was your excursion? No unexpected surprises?"  
  
Before she could reply, Jeff's head edged out of the door. "Who is he?" he asked, pointing at John.  
  
"So, this is a 'yes' to the unexpected surprise." John exchanged a look with Kate, then turned to Jeff. "I'm John."   
  
"This is Jeff," Kate offered when it seemed like Jeff was going to eye John suspiciously forever if she didn't. "We sort of found each other at my last stop. He was the only survivor of that town." She added the last part quietly.   
  
John watched him, taking in the boy's condition. John's expression would've come across as indifference to anyone other than Kate, but she knew he was hiding the pain behind it. Jeff, even without knowing John, saw it, too.   
  
"I wasn't the only survivor," Jeff suddenly said. "At least, not from those bombs."  
  
She might've stopped breathing again. "What do you-- Jeff, were there others in your town?"  
  
Jeff didn't seem to be listening. He murmured to himself, "They survived the bombs, but they died anyway. They covered me with their bodies, you know, and they were okay, but then they died."  
  
"Jeff--" she tried to approach the boy, but John stopped her and subtly shook his head.  
  
"We were at the bank where Dad worked when it happened. Everyone except Lisa, 'cause she was buying some cheese. When we heard the sound, Dad looked outside the bank. He looked kinda crazy, and then he just pulled us into the vault. Then my sister just covered me, held me in place. I couldn't breathe, 'cause they were all on top of me, even Mom and Dad."  
  
Kate remembered the emergency contingency films they used to watch at school, teaching them the things to do at times of earthquake, fire, or even nuclear explosion. Anything between the fallout debris and the person could diminish the radiation exposure, so one was to use human bodies if necessary. In this case, Jeff's father decided to follow the procedure to the nick.  
  
"It took like forever, and when I woke up, it was really weird. Dad was weird. And he was very sick. Mom was like, crying all over, and then the building just broke down. At least I think it did, 'cause when I woke up again, everything was flat, and they were all dead. Except my sister Iris. She died a few days later. Don't know what happened to Lisa, but I made a grave for her anyway."  
  
The four small mounds she had seen. They were graves. This boy had buried his family, alone.  
  
She didn't know when she'd begun trembling, but she was, and a hand -- John's -- held hers tightly. It seemed to absorb the trembles, and she gathered enough of her will to tuck Jeff under the blanket again and held his cold hand. Jeff blankly stared at the window until he fell asleep again.   
  
When she came out of the truck, thinking of the four small graves, John was leaning against the truck, looking at the starless sky.  
  
For a second, he looked infinitely far away. She had barely stopped herself from reaching to him in fear when he saw her and his faraway expression turned into the one of worry.  
  
"Is he going to be...?" he trailed off.  
  
"He'll be fine. He's not showing any symptoms of radiation poisoning. He should be if he's been exposed to a lethal dose."  
  
The relief on his face was stark. "Good."  
  
"Though I can't really say how this would affect his mind," she said, sounding rueful without even trying to.  
  
He waited until she stood beside him, just an arm's length away, before he told her, "You saved one life today."  
  
And she couldn't be proud. "A couple of millions more to go." The very idea smoldered her, wearying her down. She couldn't even venture to imagine how John must feel.  
  
She could feel his searching gaze upon her face. "Here," he said suddenly. He took out a bright little thing from his jacket pocket, where she knew he was keeping his mother's photo. "Yours."  
  
She received the ring, contemplating its brilliance and luster with clinical detachment. One brilliant diamond couldn't be as valuable as a loaf of bread now, and it no longer connected her to the world. She would never get that back, with or without the ring. She put it into her inner jacket pocket.  
  
"Not going to wear it?" John asked, concern concealed behind his eyes.  
  
"The world I was trying to hold onto no long exists." And the wedding was already off. Scott. Scott. Poor Scott. But she had to let things go. Now more than ever.  
  
"We will have it all back, Kate. The world."  
  
John Connor still surprised her, even now. "You really believe that?"  
  
He considered his answer, taking his time. "I believe," he began with crystal certainty, "that you saved two lives today."   
  
"Two?"   
  
He didn't elaborate further. He didn't have to. She knew.  
  
She looked away. "You shouldn't have come."  
  
John shrugged. "I must've been fretting too much. Marybeth kicked me out."  
  
"You didn't have to worry."  
  
"I know," he said. "But I would be lying if I say I didn't."  
  
Yet. There was always 'yet'. He wasn't supposed to be here, yet he was. He was too valuable to risk himself for such little things, yet he did. She swore she'd never be his weakness, yet she was. She was afraid if he'd die in their intangible future because he cared too much.  
  
She couldn't have both, could she? She couldn't just be the one he could confide in without becoming his weakness. If she were the one he didn't have to be strong for, she would also be his weakness.  
  
Yet he'd said she saved him.  
  
Who was trying to be strong for whom?  
  
"Cold?" he asked.  
  
There was no use denying it. "A little," she admitted.  
  
Wordlessly he came closer to her side, wrapping both of them with his jacket. The warmth spread and brimmed over her.  
  
"You could almost see the stars," he remarked.  
  
There was nothing out there. No stars. No light. Nothing.   
  
"We could," she agreed.  
  
Hope. Oh, the elusive hope that wasn't allowed for her.  
  
But with him, below the unseen stars, she thought she might have glimpsed it like a shooting star arching across the night sky.


	6. Part 6

No, you aren't seeing things. This is actually Part 6, which was one of many chapters that were lost years ago when I stopped updating due to the computer breakdown. I started to write from the scratch again because I really would like to finish the story and give some sort of resolution to this little Terminator saga, on which I have invested a lot of my affection.

If you actually have been keeping taps on the story, hoping for any update, I really do apologize - and thank you for sticking with me for this long.

* * *

**6.**

The air of the indoor shooting range is rather cold, but armed by the fact that her dad is behind her, watching, she holds her arms steady and triggers.

The sound is louder, a lot louder than she remembers.

When the paper target comes back, there are no holes where they are supposed to be, and only one somewhere high in the white space, just above the black figure's shoulder.

And before she can stop herself, she is turning around and asking the question, "Is this what you do, Dad? But shoot people instead of papers?"

She feels his hands freeze on her shoulder. Then Dad is staring into her face. "Katie, people can be good, but they can just as easily become evil when they're scared or ignorant. And I want you to be able to protect yourself from them when that happens."

She doesn't understand - how can good people be evil? - but she nods anyway. She is already quite happy that she'll never have to shoot anyone in her lifetime.

The outside world is warm, and it gets even warmer when her dad looks down at her and smiles.

"Next stop. Flying lesson."

She squeals and hugs him tightly. She has the best dad in the world.

* * *

John Connor let go a handful of sand and watched it scatter against the wind dancing along the horizon. The world, even out this far, was still depressingly grey, the sky and the earth alike. The sun, the unforgiving and severe desert sun, was nowhere to be seen. 

"Starbucks." Ralph sighed as he stirred his alleged stew in the portable stove. "I miss Starbucks."

John turned to his friend, half a smile on his face. "You don't drink coffee."

"That didn't stop me from eating away all those muffin thingies they made. Speaking of, one or two Krispy Kreme donuts wouldn't go amiss either." Ralph suddenly looked up, eyes full of curiosity. "What do you miss, John?"

Ralph's offhand question took him off-guard, and instead of answering, John picked up a small, battered tree branch from underneath his feet. With a tree branch in his hand, John almost said, Christmas tree. Christmas tree. The common sense dictated it was one of those things normal people would miss, but John Connor couldn't remember if he had ever built one before. You couldn't miss something you never had. Then what was he allowed to miss?

His bike. Hot shower. Hot shower, though, was purely in theory. It was another thing he'd rarely had a chance to get anyway, even in his previous existence before the Judgment Day. What he used to have was the cacophony of the traffic on Friday nights. Cobwebs of lights from the interstates seen from a hill. The blue sky. The sun.

There was no shadow on the ground now, with the sun stubbornly remaining invisible, and he didn't remember what they had been like. What any of them had been like. Had there been a life for him before this? If he couldn't remember, then what was the use?

He dropped the tree branch and brushed off the dust from his palms.

"John?"

Ralph was staring at him, the large metal scoop in his hand. John forced a smile on his face. "Kraft Dinner. No offense to your stew."

"None at all taken," Ralph said. "Hell, at this point, I wouldn't even mind that Lean Cuisine thing Marybeth used to feed me."

"I know. You miss Marybeth."

Ralph laughed out loud, like it was coming from the heart. John thought perhaps he had never met anyone who could laugh like this, like life still had a room for happiness. "Busted, huh? Well, I can't help it, John. It's like a tooth missing or something, not listening to her whine every day," Ralph admitted, half in embarrassment. "Oh hell, I know they're doing fine. Keith's taking good care of his mother, I'm sure."

John, too, thought that Keith was capable, more than capable if he wanted to be. Keith was a whiz kid, especially when it came to computer, knowledgeable enough to operate the old route system of the Crystal Peak Base without John's supervision, and sharp enough to recognize John's program codes as the one that had been used a long ago to break into the Pentagon. It had taken a little bit of time for John to deny Keith's (correct) accusation that John was the hacker who had caused all manners of trouble for the Pentagon back in 2001.

Keith and Marybeth were fine in Crystal Peak, holding the port. John knew they were as safe as they could possibly be. It was this excursion, however, that longer felt safe.

They were at the outskirts of another dead town scarred with the aftermath of the nuclear apocalypse. This place reminded him of the towns that he had wandered in with his mother as a kid before she'd been forced into the asylum. Sporadic remains of towns, even more sporadic presence of nature except dusty sand. They were far enough from major blast sites, yet there was no sign of life. No hint for the current status of its previous residents revealed itself, and the fate of survivors remained a mystery.

Still, this outing was necessary. John couldn't simply wander about and round up the survivors here and there. They needed systematic set-up to begin mapping the surviving population and overall damage, and for that, they needed military contacts. Which meant he needed intelligence, at least somewhat reliable, tangible information outside the radio communication, and it wouldn't be found in the Crystal Peak control room by listening to occasional radio transmissions and trying to break Skynet's firewalls that even he and Keith couldn't penetrate without being detected.

Apparently John's absent silence and pauses were becoming too long, too significant. Ralph glanced at him a couple of times before clearing his throat. "Have you been sleeping at all lately? Something's been bothering you, isn't it? I know you're a quiet kid by default, but lately, well, you don't look so good, John."

John picked up the dead tree branch again. It snapped it into little pieces and fell away as easily as dust. Useless. John looked up, decided. "Ralph, maybe you should take Jeff and go back to Crystal Peak. If this turns out to be legit, Kate and I can finish scouting and contact-"

"No."

"Ralph."

"I don't feel right about Jeff being here either, but it's just obvious he would've snuck into the truck to follow us anyhow, so it's a moot point." Ralph gave John a quick grin that was probably meant to be reassuring but turned out to look more resigned than anything else. "We had to come out at some point, John. Can't be holed up in the shelter forever, can we?"

_If only_. If only that was ever an option, John would've welcomed it with open arms, holding the Carsons, Jeff and Kate in Crystal Peak and hiding them forever. It never was.

"I know you can handle things without us," Ralph said, his solemn voice bellying his easy-going nature. "You're something different, hell, even I can see that, but still, it ain't gonna feel right leaving you two alone. You're just barely older than my Keith, and--" he took a long breath. "Look, John, let's just drop this talk. You're not gonna change my mind."

Here was Ralph, trying to be a father to him. There was no persuading him now, John knew, not when he was in this mode. "Two more days, then," John compromised, finally. "If nothing turns up, we're heading back."

"No complaint from me," Ralph said, dropping the stern father mode and becoming good-humored again. "But, if this outing's about spending some time alone with your lady, I'm completely willing to go right back and drag Jeff with me. That's no problem."

It took a second longer than necessary for John to figure out what Ralph meant. "No," John frowned. "No, it's not…" It took several more seconds to realize that he didn't know how to continue. It wasn't something they talked about - not something he _even_ thought about.

"I'm a lousy matchmaker, aren't I?" Ralph, apparently taking a pity on John, opted for a way out for both of them. He continued sheepishly, "Marybeth tells me often enough."

John, oddly relieved, decided to play along. "Marybeth is never wrong, you know that."

Ralph grunted. "My life would've been easier if I got that advice twenty years ago."

Ralph, in all his half-hearted complaints and grunts, was a wonderful husband and a wonderful father. A father, and not just to Keith. It was an odd and alien feeling, this warmth, to be on receiving end of paternal instinct. There was no reason to dislike it, but it was too comfortable, too easy, and nothing about John Connor's life was supposed to be easy.

Nothing, not even this wasted moment of sentimentality.

John covered this sudden pang of vulnerability quickly. "The stew looks about done," John stood up, looking for an excuse. "I'll get the others."

"Sure, you go do that."

John headed toward to their truck parked just outside the ruins. Jeff was standing on a pile of ruins and absently throwing pebbles around, probably still miffed that John didn't let him carry a sidearm. John considered telling him to come down from the unstable mound but decided against it--it was likely to turn into a negotiation, in which case John might have to give into the handgun issue in exchange, and he wasn't ready for that, not yet. Kate, on the other hand, was sitting in the back of their truck, reading out from a small wrinkled book of Shakespearean plays. A luxury she couldn't afford, she often said, but he was still glad that she had brought the book with her. Sitting down and reading a book would become impossibility soon, maybe a lot sooner than he'd like.

Sensing his approach, she looked up from the book and smiled. "Hey."

He watched her put away her book and noticed, suddenly, that her hair had grown out quite a bit. It was loosely tied, but still generous streaks of her auburn hair framed her face, softening her look. He liked it this way, and he wondered why it should matter to him. "How's Romeo doing?" he asked, leaning against the truck.

"How's your arm doing?" Kate asked, subtly turning his words around.

"Better than Romeo, I'm guessing." He knew she was going to ask eventually, but he consciously tugged at his left sleeve, covering it from her view. He'd almost broken his left arm from trying to hold back a heavy crate that was about to cave in on Jeff a week ago back at the shelter. He wasn't bothered by pain. Pain, when controlled, could be ignored.

Pain could be ignored, _his_ pain could be ignored, but if he was reading her expression correctly, Kate wasn't about to be. He suddenly wished for a body of steel, not for his sake but hers. A futile wish. "It's fine," he lied. "Really, Kate."

She didn't press the point right then, but he could already see another check-up coming by the end of the day. Most likely he wasn't going to find a way to avoid it this time, so he went for a pre-emptive strike. "A full check-up as soon as we return to the base, and I won't say a word of complaint."

She appeared to consider the offer. "Not a word," she emphasized.

"Not a single word."

"Deal."

Her smile was bright and cheerful, like it was the only thing she had left to give. He smiled in return, because he, too, had nothing else.

"John! _John!_"

Their smiles abruptly came to an end and they whirled around, catching the panic in Jeff's voice. Jeff was pointing at somewhere beyond the town. "Look!"

In a few leaping steps, John rushed up to Jeff, Kate shortly behind him. At first, John didn't know what Jeff was looking at, but then he saw a jeep making its way south toward them to the town across the barren field. John gauged the distance and figured it would take the jeep less than ten minutes to reach them. He didn't stop for a second to think. "Let's get back," he said, ushering them down the path.

"You think they're the soldiers?" Jeff asked as they broke into a run, his youthful face thinly guising his interest.

"Maybe." Or maybe not. There was a floating rumor that some remnants of the United States Military were apparently going around picking up people in this area, which was why they were here. The rumor could be true, or this could be something else entirely. John didn't think he would find either possibility pleasant.

"Maybe _they_ will let me carry a gun, since you're never going to." Jeff pulled a part of a sullen teenager all too well, letting John know just how his poster parents would've felt all so long ago.

"John will give you a gun when he thinks you're ready," Kate easily fell into the maternal role she had been assuming ever since they had met him.

"And when will I ever be ready?" Jeff asked.

"Now," John said, stopping on the track. He quickly took out his handgun and checked the clip. "You remember how to use it?" Jeff, taken off-guard, paused, but then quickly nodded. John handed Jeff his gun. "Remember the lessons. Don't forget about cocking the pistol before shooting, but never, ever, take off the safety before then. I'm trusting you with this."

And there _was_ an enormous amount of trust involved in this, and from the look on her face, Kate's uncertainty as well. They still hadn't decided whether to be relieved that Jeff had recovered enough to be interested in guns or to be worried, but now, there wasn't much of a choice left.

Ralph had noticed the jeep too and was waiting for them. He was still holding his scoop, looking uncomfortable. "What do we do now?"

"We'll see," John answered, taking another gun out of their trunk and loading it. It naturally fell into his grip, and he tucked it inside his jacket before turning to Ralph with a grin. "Maybe they smelled your stew and thought to join us for dinner."

"Hope not." Ralph glanced at the stew still simmering in the pot. "We only have enough for four."

It would've been impossible for the passengers of the beat-up jeep not to have noticed their truck, but it didn't approach them in a straight line. Rather, it almost seemed like it'd go around them before it changed its route at the last minute and came toward them.

They weren't soldiers, John noticed first through his binoculars. He could see two people in the jeep, both plainly civilians. Other than the Carsons and Jeff, this was the first face-to-face meeting with the survivors. Too early to be hopeful or nervous, but he felt tight knots across his chest, which he pointedly ignored. The jeep stopped several dozen feet away from them, but no one inside made a move.

John waited, but the passengers of the jeep didn't seem to want to come out, and they stayed at an odd holding pattern. This reminded him of the Hollywood Western movies where two parties, one bad and one good, had their face-off in a ridiculously long-drawn fashion, except this situation was even more ridiculous. Someone had to make the first move.

John stepped out slowly, giving a quick glance at Kate. She nodded at him slightly and took her position in front of Ralph and Jeff. John knew she would back him up, if it came to that.

John proceeded forward until he was close enough to read their expressions. The older, white-haired woman who stayed in the jeep had only one note of emotion: fear. The driver, on the other hand, slowly came out of the jeep by herself and had something else in her look that had John think maybe, maybe that people weren't entirely made of distrust and fear.

"Hey, how's it going?" he began casually, knowing there just was no way of coming out of this potential conversation or potential monologue without sounding ridiculous.

The woman, in her mid-30s with a strong sense of strength all about her features, didn't look like she had been having much luck lately and didn't hesitate to show it. "Pretty craptastic, all things considered. You?"

Openly hostile but with a sense of sarcasm. John figured it was better than outright fear. "Not too bad." He shrugged. "We were looking forward to meeting other survivors, and we did, so I'll say--not too bad."

The woman took it all in with her dark eyes: John, Ralph, their truck, Kate, and then Jeff. Her eyes stayed longer on Jeff, and then they turned to John again. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why would you be looking forward to meeting others?"

And here he had been thinking people, being social creatures, would want to group themselves at the first opportunity. John didn't like putting up with paranoia, but there seemed like a good reason for this group to act this way, so he bore it patiently. "Do I need a reason not to?"

"Yes, because that's definitely a gun under your jacket," the woman said, her voice harsh.

"It is," John easily admitted, which surprised the woman. "But I'm not planning to use it. Or, more specifically, I don't want to use it. You're the first people we've seen ever since we came out from our shelter. We don't want to hurt anyone, but we definitely don't want to get hurt."

She looked downright tired now. "How can we trust you?"

John spread his arms. "You don't have to, but then you'll probably miss out Ralph's fabulous stew." He paused. "Actually, maybe you should count yourself lucky for that."

"Hey now," Ralph complained somewhere behind him, followed by Jeff's chuckle.

Kate stepped in front and slowly came to John's side. "Maybe you can join us for dinner while I take a look at your friend." Kate was nodding toward the old lady in the jeep's backseat, and John noticed, too, that she looked too pale to be fine. "She doesn't look well. Is she hurt?"

The woman in front of them glanced back, then turned to Kate, her look much thawed. "You a doctor?"

"Veterinarian," Kate answered.

That seemed to clinch the deal. The woman moved aside to let Kate pass. "Please do what you can for her. She's not seriously hurt, but I think she might have sprained her ankle."

After watching Kate grab her med kit and breach the gap, John introduced himself to the woman. "I'm John. She," he nodded toward Kate who rushed to tend to her new patient, "is Kate."

"I'm Jeff," said the boy, who had by now come to John's side. "And this is Ralph. And that's his famous stew."

The woman seemed completely disarmed by Jeff's grin. "Siobhan," she said, shaking John's offered hand and looking sufficiently apologetic now. "Thanks. And sorry for the greeting. The first survivors we met, well, they were less than friendly. We didn't want to take a chance with you either, but Sally needed help, and I didn't have any to give."

Ralph was already sitting her down, looking sympathetic. "What happened?"

"We – me, Sally and her husband Thomas -- were heading south, after hearing in the radio the bits about how soldiers were gathering up people around here. Then at one town we met some guys. Of course, at first we were ecstatic, but not so much after they turned out to be pure thugs. They robbed us of our food, pushed us around. Thomas was knocked out in one of the struggles, and the concussion…" Siobhan stopped short there and glanced back at Sally, who was now being examined by Kate. Her expression was neutral, but her voice was strained, "It took me three days to convince her to bury him. A week to convince her to leave him and come with me."

John felt Ralph wince beside him. Ralph was a jovial person by default, but even he strained to hang onto this reality. It was a continuous and unrelenting struggle because whenever a rare, deceptive sense of peace numbed their perceptions, despair crept into their hearts so easily and quickly at a second's notice. Even Jeff, barely a teenager, understood what Siobhan meant, what this meant. The boy remained pointedly blank, the youthful mischief he'd lately recovered now drained out from him.

There were no condolences that would be given and felt right, so no one offered any.

Siobhan rubbed her eyes, tension draining away from her shoulder. "I don't want to say this, but it's unfortunate that such bastards didn't just get blown up with the rest of the world."

Maybe it was, John thought. It was ironic, how they really didn't need Skynet to do its job. They were already doing so fine getting rid of each other by themselves.

It turned out that Sally's ankle was only mildly sprained, and after Kate assured them it was nothing to worry about, their new guests gratefully took seats with them as Ralph offered his stew. While Sally ate without a word, Siobhan recounted her experience over their dinner, how she used to be a cop, NYPD, and how she had been lucky enough to be vacationing on the Day -- otherwise, she would've been incinerated like the rest of New York. Siobhan had met Sally and Thomas on some mountains she was hiking when the bombs hit.

"And you?" Siobhan asked John after Ralph shared his extremely lucky experience. "What's your story?"

His story? Would CliffNote version suffice? The unintended absurdity of the question took him tore him in odd places, and he hesitated.

Thankfully, Kate didn't. "My father was an army general in charge of the computer system that maintained the military weapons control," she began calmly and effectively, drawing everyone's attention to herself and away from John. "When the systems became disruptive, he sent us to a bomb shelter and left John in charge. We rode through most of the blasts there."

This was their official version. Not a lie, but a conveniently formulated to avoid less-than-convincing materials. It sounded convincing coming out from Kate; John didn't feel half the confidence.

Kate reiterated the cover they had been using on the radio all along. Siobhan seemed to soak it all in, but Sally didn't seem to have enough strength to care either way. John suspected that would probably be how most of people would take it.

After dinner, while the rest of them set up for the night, Kate administered a shot of painkillers for Sally and set her into a comfortable position and Siobhan cleaned the dishes with Jeff. Siobhan seemed especially fond of Jeff, and John briefly wondered if she had had any kid, back in New York. But there was no point in asking. He could already see the grief etching in her every gesture.

John and Ralph set up the night camp with experienced ease, turning the back of the truck into a sleeping area and setting up gas lamps around the perimeter, all the while consciously using his injured left arm to accomplish the task. The back of the truck had a room enough for Sally, Kate and Jeff; Siobhan should be fine in the jeep. John took out his backpack and a blanket from the truck and turned to Ralph. "I'll take the first watch."

"Again?" Ralph frowned but couldn't resist a yawn himself. "Don't you ever sleep?"

John smiled faintly. "I will later. Go get some rest, Ralph."

Ralph gingerly gave in and slipped into the passenger seat of the truck. Jeff eventually settled into the back of the truck with Sally and Kate.

He made sure everyone was set and asleep before he settled around a small fire he built. His shirt was soaked with sweat, and he wondered why it should be. The fire was not nearly warm enough, and the setting sun was distant and grey behind the threatening clouds of ash and dust, bestowing no warmth on the earth. Sleep, as always, did not come.

John reached for his backpack to grab a bottle of water with his left hand. His left arm, still stiff from the pain, pushed over the bag and spilled its content onto the ground. To his surprise, he found Kate's book among the content – the pack had been Kate's, the same generic, unmarked bag they had grabbed from the Crystal Peak reserve. He picked it up and fingered the old paper, its alien texture, its resilience. Out of curiosity he couldn't explain, he flipped the book open and read lines she had underlined. One of them stood out: it had an odd sense of desperation in it, willing to be said out loud.

"_Then I defy you, stars_.'

The syllables turned into ashes in his mouth.

"_Then I defy you, stars._"

Romeo thought he was defying destiny. But that defiance only led to his death, and, in turn, Juliet's. It was, John decided, hitting too close to home.

Fate, for John Connor, was a mercurial factor, an ever-changing elusive equation that he wasn't equipped to understand. He didn't know how much information he had learned from his mother and Uncle Bob about the future war would still apply to his own, didn't know if he was doing things right, if he was doing _anything_ right. The future had been changed once. There was no guarantee it wouldn't change itself again, no guarantee that the humankind was going to win the war against the machines in the end, no guarantee he'd succeed. The fact that the Judgment Day had been delayed suggested that Skynet was either creating several different timelines, hence multiple universes, every time a terminator traveled to the past, or the future was continuously changing as the past continued to change. Or, he was only experiencing a slice of the timeline and things were morphing into another shape at this exact nanosecond. Or--

Or, maybe he was still thirteen, having a delirious episode in the middle of a hot summer afternoon after drinking one bottle too many and in result making up a grandiose tale of his mother being a legend and himself being the savior of the world. Maybe he was in a white room right next to his mother's.

But when he opened his eyes, he was still here, in his greyland. Of course. He could never be that lucky.

And in this greyland was also Kate, who had climbed out from the truck. Slowly, she made her way toward him.

He closed the book quickly. "Did I wake you?"

"You didn't," she said, quietly taking a seat beside him in front of the fire. He couldn't remember when they had begun replacing words with compatible silence, but it had happened, gradually and inevitably, and between them questions were almost unnecessary. She read his expressions like she read this little book of hers, which made her far more dangerous to him than anything that Skynet could do against him.

And he, likewise, knew what she was worried about, and he didn't need her to worry. He returned the book back to her. "I wish I could understand more of this. Maybe I should've actually listened in English class." He then added with a lopsided grin, "Or maybe I shouldn't have _cut_ English classes."

She didn't fall for his strained effort at easy humor. She stared at his hands and the book they were holding, then looked up at him. "You're already doing everything you can, John."

There was a devastating amount of conviction in her words, and he could almost believe it -- only if he could let himself, which he couldn't. "Not good enough. Not fast enough."

"It never is for you."

Her sigh was felt, rather than heard, and he stared into the distance beyond the fire that burned quietly in front of them. The world was crumbling, every color drained out of existence. He should be used to this familiar sight of grey, both in reality and in nightmares, yet it still left him in small, brittle pieces.

He picked up a few more branches and threw them into the fire. Even this dried tree branch was supposed to be a blessing; it was firm when he touched it, almost proud and astonishingly real. Just the fact that they could walk on the earth was supposed to be a blessing, a blessing he knew wouldn't last. How long would it take for the effect of the radiation to wear off and things would begin to grow again? And if they ever did, how much of it would survive the war that was coming? How would they ever be able to recreate this? This beauty.

When Kate spoke again, her voice was just above the sound of the crackling fire. "Did you find the answer?"

"To what?"

"To the question you've been asking yourself for the last few days instead of sleeping." Her eyes didn't waver from his. "Is there a way to shut down Skynet before it mobilizes?"

He almost smiled. Of course she knew. He could only hope that he wasn't this transparent to anyone else other than Kate Brewster.

"You and your mother tried to change the future once," she reminded him, and he heard what was unsaid -- yet the Judgment Day still happened. Fate was inevitable.

Give in. Give into it. It would be so much easier, if he could only give into the fate. He fought a bitter smile. "Maybe I never learn from my past." Ah, but John Connor was nothing if not pointlessly persistent.

Past, present, future. There was no safe refuge for him. Wherever he went, there was Skynet.

Skynet, the enemy of mankind, his nemesis. What was it doing now?

He had no idea. That was the problem.

John remembered the prototypes that had attacked him and Kate back in the Edwards Air Force Base. If those were at work, it would only be a matter of time before Skynet was fully equipped for slaughter, but they had only been prototypes, and they had to be designed and produced. How long would it take before they were mass produced? Was Skynet able to come up with production lines? No, it couldn't. It couldn't move this fast, not even Skynet. _Had_ it even decided its next step for human annihilation? If it hadn't, could he destroy it before it began? There was no core for Skynet, so no bomb would do the job. He couldn't just cut off all the connections to cyberspace controlled by Skynet, no virus that could completely destroy Skynet's sphere of domain.

How did one kill an AI? How _would_ he kill Skynet?

John never thought of himself as a sadist, but he must be, or would surely become one. Why else had his future-self let him go through this? If there had been some way to save these people -- the great military dickhead he'd become had to have known. His future-self had to have known -- would come to know, dammit -- a way to destroy Skynet before it could mobilize its machine armies and save millions. Sure, it'd screw up timelines, but what was little more damage to the already screwed-up scenario? If Skynet could cheat time, why couldn't he? If there was truly no fate but what we made, why the hell not?

He thought about Siobhan's tale, Sally's husband, Thomas, and his senseless death. Maybe all these deaths that were to come couldn't be avoided. All this was unavoidable. Something the humanity had to pay for its hubris.

Then why the hell was he even bothering?

"Stop thinking."

Her voice was a command that snapped him into the reality. Then, it was her hand that was lightly on his chest, almost pleading. "Just for a moment, stop. Just…for a little while."

He stared at Kate's hand. He didn't have to look up at her face to know that her eyes were pale and her skin drained of colour. He did this to her. Always. He always wrecked her with worry. But then, someday, he was supposed to ask her to marry him. Someday, she was supposed to say yes. All because it was how things were supposed to be. Never by choice.

_John Connor, what is it that you fear, really?_

She was studying his face seriously, and it took some effort on his part to meet her eyes and raise his eyebrow playfully. "Are you accusing me of thinking too much? What happened to my disturbing habit of leaping into the path of danger without a second thought?"

He thought she might have said something then, but she visibly swallowed it. Her hand was dropped. "Don't worry. I'm working quite hard to fix it," she said instead, her equally playful tone marred only by a trace of unswerving grief behind her eyes.

Bundled in blankets, they stared at the fire in the silence that once again settled between them. The ashy twilight tided in and disappeared, and the fire eventually crackled and died. The world was dark again except for the gas lamps flickering and making shadows of nothing on the ground.

This reality, the one he was supposed to save, faded into darkness.

* * *

TBC. (Seriously.) 


End file.
